A tribal war club from the Marquesas Islands with textbook provenance has sold for £71,000 at Woolley & Wallis. The u’u (head club) came for sale at the Salisbury saleroom on September 19 from the descendants of an early-19th century missionary.
Elijah Armitage (1781-1863) was a London Missionary Society member who travelled to the South Seas in 1821 to teach the spinning and weaving of cotton – and the Christian message – to the islanders of Tahiti.
He was there for 14 years but ultimately deemed his efforts a failure.